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Growing the Pie

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Growing the Pie Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: Growing the Pie A few weeks ago, we were pleased to announce a partnership with Brookfield Asset Management that created an alternative investment manager with one of the broadest slates of strategies and greatest asset totals. And what question did I get? “Will there still be memos?” Well, here’s your answer. * * * L.P. One thing I’m not happy being right about is the tenor of the current debate over our economic system. Most of my January memo, Political Reality Meets Economic Reality, was devoted to fretting over the rise of populism from the left and the resulting anti-capitalist sentiment, and it has risen further since. I mentioned legislation that had been introduced to appropriateMANAGEMENT, some of corporations’ cash and governance rights for workers, as well as a proposal for a higher income-tax bracket for top earners. Since then we’ve seen additional suggestions covering RESERVEDa wealth tax, higher estate taxes and, in New York City, a tax on pieds-à-terre. Clearly companies and wealthy individuals are being viewed by some as attractive political targets and goodCAPITAL sources of incremental revenue. One of the main reasons behind populism’s abilityRIGHTS to stir people is the favorable reception its rhetoric receives. “They have too much.” “We’ve been short-changed.” “The system’s rigged.” “They got where they are by cheating.” “The richALL don’t pay their fair share.” Sound bites like these find receptive audiences among OAKTREEpeople who are unhappy with their lot, whereas detecting the error in these statements requires an insight, sense of history and understanding of economics that many people lack. 2019 © What’s Going On? In the January memo, I set forth my view that in the last 10-20 years, the rising economic tide had stopped lifting all boats. In addition, major social and economic trends contributed to increases in economic inequality. These developments, I said, were largely behind the rise of populism. Ray Dalio and Bridgewater actually beat my memo by two days, publishing on January 28 an excellent note titled Populism + Weakening Economy + Limited Central Bank Power to Ease + Elections = Risky Markets and Risky Economies. I was particularly drawn to the following passage: Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and, in the government, that manifests itself in the form of © 2019 Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. All Rights Reserved Follow us: populism of the left and populism of the right. As a rule, populists of the right (who are usually capitalists) don’t know how to divide the pie well, while populists of the left (who are usually socialists) don’t know how to grow the pie. [Emphasis added] Populism of both the right (behind Donald Trump) and the left (behind Bernie Sanders) played a big part in the 2016 presidential election season. It’s the latter that’s my subject here. In my January memo, I argued at length that capitalism can be credited with much of what made the United States what it is today. In short, to borrow Ray’s terminology, the capitalist system achieved this by creating the biggest pie: the largest total GDP in the world and one of the highest per-capita GDPs. And only capitalism is likely to cause the pie to continue to grow. The failure of non-capitalist systems to produce economic growth and prosperity is well documented. Obviously, however, when the pie is divided up under capitalism, not everyone gets the same-sized piece. That’s the idea underlying the following line in Winston Churchill’s L.P.speech in the House of Commons on October 22, 1945: The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings . As with so many things, Churchill said it best. Under capitalism we’re likely to see bigger slices of the pie go, for example, to those who are smarter, more talented and more hardworking, but also to those who are luckier or born into wealth. The first threeMANAGEMENT, of these explanations are generally considered valid, the fourth is not, and people fight about the last. The gains produced by capitalism are inseparable from – actually they deriveRESERVED from – the opportunity for those who are smarter, more talented and more hardworking to end up with bigger slices of the pie. On the other hand, no one considers it inherently desirableCAPITAL that lucky people do so also. And many think the benefits of inheritance should at least be watered down (although generally not the benefactors or beneficiaries). RIGHTS And what do the “populists of the left”ALL want? For the most part, “fairer” and more equal outcomes. They say relatively little aboutOAKTREE expanding the pie but more about fairness in how it’s apportioned. That’s why Churchill went on from the above to add: 2019 . The inherent© virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. When we look around the world, we see countries that have stressed equal sharing of the pie and others that have cared more about expanding the pie. The equal sharers include Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and the USSR, while the expanders, in addition to the U.S., include South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. In which group of countries do people generally live better? In which group would you rather live? Today, many people apparently fail to understand the role of capitalism in creating the wealth that Americans share. Others may feel the capitalism that got us here may have been fine in its time but isn’t needed anymore; thus, we should shift our attention to more equal distribution instead. And a last cohort may consider equal sharing more important than the creation of more prosperity. Socialism superimposes socio-political considerations on an economic system, such that equality is elevated relative to self-interest and individual motivation. Capitalism omits that emphasis. In this 2 © 2019 Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. All Rights Reserved Follow us: context, last month Charlie Munger called my attention to China’s agricultural history following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The following excerpts are from a 1986 paper in the Journal of International Affairs regarding the then-recent agricultural reforms in China. This’ll be a long slog, but I think it’s worth studying how China transitioned from the “equal sharing of miseries”: The long-term (1957-1978) growth of cereal output just kept up with the expansion of the population. Over this period, China actually was becoming more dependent on imported grain to feed its population. By 1978, about 30 million urbanites, roughly 40 percent of the population of China’s municipalities, were dependent on imported cereals. The performance of most non-grain crops was even less impressive. The slow growth of farm output, not surprisingly, was accompanied by extraordinarily modest growth of peasant income. By 1978 an apparent consensus had been reached at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist party that the painfully slow growth of agricultural output was caused . by certain inefficiencies of China’s collective production structure, theL.P. loss of productivity resulting from the promotion of local self-sufficiency, the curtailment of rural marketing and the disincentive of relatively low prices for farm products. Beginning in 1978 the Central Committee endorsed a series of sweeping reforms that addressed each of these problems. Collectivized agriculture . was replaced with a system of household farming in which the land was divided among existing households. Decisions on cropping patterns and the quantities of fertilizers and other inputs to be used are now made by each householdMANAGEMENT, rather than by team and brigade leaders. Peasants are now encouraged to specialize and produce for the market rather than being forced to be self-sufficient.RESERVED Comparative advantage cropping has been encouraged by reopening rural markets . CAPITAL These reforms . have led to an unprecedented pace of growth since 1978. Grain output, for example, had grown fromRIGHTS 305 to 407 million metric tons, an average annual rate of almost 5 percent, well over twice the historic rate of 2.1 percent achieved between 1957 and 1978.ALL . OAKTREE The official jettisoning of the policy of local cereals self-reliance, encapsulated in the Maoist slogan “Take2019 grain as the key link,” and the reopening of rural markets have stimulated an© upsurge of production of non-cereal crops. The unprecedented growth of agricultural output also has been accompanied by substantial growth in real farm income. Average per capita farm income in current prices rose from 134 yuan in 1978 to 355 yuan in 1984. The gains derive not only from the growth of farm output . but also from the substantial expansion of rural non-farm employment and income. Although decollectivization has provided the incentives for improved productivity growth, it has created . significant and partially unanticipated adverse consequences. Over the longer run it is not clear how the local labor-intensive maintenance of existing irrigation systems will be sustained. The current system appears almost certain to have an adverse effect on the distribution of income in rural areas and may lead, ultimately, to significant rural unrest. Another seemingly 3 © 2019 Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. All Rights Reserved Follow us: unanticipated consequence of the demise of the collective system is the impaired delivery of rural social services. State budgetary funds for rural health-care and primary-school education always have been limited. Most of these programs . were financed by collectively accumulated welfare funds. A final unanticipated consequence of the reform is its budgetary impact. While the higher farm quota prices the state introduced along with decollectivization have contributed significantly to greater incentives and productivity for peasant producers, the financial burden to the state of these incentives has mounted far more rapidly than expected.
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